Glass rooms

At the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the most extensive survey ever conducted of glassworks by Carlo Scarpa takes the visitor's initial wonder and translates it into compelling, pressing and meticulous close-examination.

When deciding to visit the exhibition Carlo Scarpa: Venini 1932-1947, the curious flanêur has to keep in mind the painterly image that, from 1800 till today have succeeded in summing up the triangle built around St Mark's Basin — the water, the air and the light (the fire) of Venice. Turner, Kokoschka, De Chirico and Virgilio Guidi have all transformed the built setting of the island of San Giorgio into a single mirror for the dozens of small islands that form the melancholic city.

There is therefore much more than a question of organisation behind the decision to establish a new centre for exhibitions and specialist studies on glass in the ex-boarding school of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, which is currently presenting the most extensive show ever of glassworks by Carlo Scarpa, and has a packed line-up of exhibitions, all on glassmaking in the twentieth century. Drawing on the expertise of an excellent committee of specialists, the project aims to develop and set up, in conjunction with the Fondazioni Cini — which houses a study centre complete with a specialised library — a glasswork archive, as well as conferences and fellowships related to the subject.

Curator Marino Barovier has been tracking glass pieces by Carlo Scarpa for over twenty years. In 1991, his team held an initial exhibition displaying a small number of pieces, to the general astonishment of the general public, who then initiated a discovery of this facet of the Venetian maestro.

This exhibition was followed by an extensive study with Venini in Murano, which lead, in 1997, to an exhibition in Brescia, and arrived at the present day with the definitive consecration that opens this kind of "Kunsthalle for glass". The space will be supported by the Pentagram Stiftung Foundation, which will present exhibitions and artists with the aim of "bringing glass back to the centre of the international art scene and debate".

<em>Carlo Scarpa: Venini 1932-1947</em>, installation view at the Fondazione Cini, Venice — *Carlo Scarpa: Venini 1932-1947*, installation view at the Fondazione Cini, Venice

Designed by Annabelle Selldorf's New York-based architecture studio, the sequence of exhibition spaces fails to present a unitary theme, perhaps for the number of co-designers present, alongside additional specialists involved in the lighting and furnishing. Partly enclosed in large showcases with uprights in slender walnut, especially designed by Selldorf and manufactured by the Capovilla carpenters in Venice — who for years have been faithful interpreters of the maestro's designs — the collection of over 300 pieces does not accept a distracted visit: it takes the visitor's initial wonder and translates it into compelling, pressing and meticulous close-examination.

The experience of working for Venini in Murano — for its artisan scale, ongoing relationship with the master glassmaker and the extraordinary nature of the finished product —constitute a mental paradigm that the young Scarpa carried with him for ever, applying it to all his activities almost as it if were a realised utopia. Not to be missed, on display, are the drawings for the master glassblower: plan, section and full-scale elevation of a large bowl designed in two colours; complete with notes in pen: "Two lunar glass pieces — ultra urgent — Countess Volpi" and "make sure!!! molten-molten!!". A graphic and working dialogue that we see again over time, be it with builders, blacksmiths, carpenters or painters.

All the designs by the Venetian maestro can now be seen under a new light beneath the beam of the extensive research made known through this exhibition

While the screening of Carlo Scarpa fuori dal paradiso ["Carlo Scarpa away from paradise"], a film produced for the occasion, is somewhat bizarre, the show's imposing catalogue — enriched with sumptuous photographs by F. Barasciutti that portray in part the physical nature of the glass surface — brings up to date, with an essay by the scholar Carla Sonego, research on the historic archive of Venini, which was given up for lost in a 1972 fire but is, instead, largely still in existence.

With many reproductions of documents and photographs from the time, the involvement of Scarpa and architect F. Speciale in Venini's commissions of lighting systems for large public spaces — by private clients and the office of the Ministry of Communications in Rome — is fully described.

The works documented for the legendary building of the new station at Florence and for numerous post offices in the mid-1930s brought Scarpa into contact with leading architects, while simultaneously leading him to reflect on the design and application of artificial light in architecture. Just by knowing about these early and previously unpublished experiences, the visitor can understand the continual exploration that Scarpa made in the body of architecture that he subsequently created: walls and ceilings that incorporate and assimilate lighting needs, not only for the usual functional reasons but also when necessary further contributing to the spatial "comment". Artificial light becomes a rational object that reappears in all manner of design projects.

All the designs by the Venetian maestro can now be seen under a new light beneath the beam of the extensive research made known through this exhibition. The glassworks give off a Venetian-Veneto light captured by the sensitivity acquired over the years from working in Murano that became artistic experience and that, not by chance, was transferred into the "proto-school" of industrial design created in 1950 by Giulio Carlo Argan in Venice with Albini, Scarpa and Vinicio Vianello.Luigi Guzzardi

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Glass rooms

At the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the most extensive survey ever conducted of glassworks by Carlo Scarpa takes the visitor's initial wonder and translates it into compelling, pressing and meticulous close-examination.

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Technology and design for innovative washrooms

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